Exactly 100 years ago the wealthy bought revolvers to protect themselves against the mob, soldiers shot striking workers dead and revolution was in the air...

THE Edwardian era is often portrayed as a period of peace and calm that preceded the horrors of the First World War.

In fact the early years of the 20th century were a time of enormous social unrest. And exactly 100 years ago this month, in August 1911, Britain appeared to be on the brink of revolution.

The Liberal government, elected in a landslide victory in 1905, was being assailed from all quarters. Traditional Conservatives, nicknamed “the last ditchers”, were opposing the government’s planned restrictions on the powers of the House of Lords, which were designed to curtail the centuries’ long hold of the landed gentry.

The Suffragettes, who were fighting for votes for women, were becoming increasingly militant, with members smashing windows of government buildings, attacking ministers and setting fire to postboxes.

And most dangerously of all the country was gripped by a wave of strikes that threatened to overturn the old order and usher in a revolutionary era of workers’ control.

The industrial unrest of the Edwardian age was fuelled principally by economic factors. For much of the 19th century Britain had been the Workshop Of The World but by the turn of the century Britain’s dominance was threatened, with the US and Germany providing stiff economic competition.

As our share of world trade fell, living standards dropped. In the period 1896-1914, real wages fell by around 10 per cent, while from 1909-1912 the cost of living rose twice as quickly as it had done between 1902-1908.

A new generation of trade union leaders were determined not only to gain higher wages for their members but also to use their power to transform the country radically.

“They hoped to form single unions for each of the great industries and use the weapon of the general strike to end capitalism and secure the revolutionary overthrow of the old system of society,” explains historian HL Peacock.

The wave of industrial action – unprecedented in British history – began in 1910 with a strike by railway workers, which was followed by similar action by cotton workers, boilermakers and Welsh miners. In 1911 sailors went on strike.

And in August, as the country sweltered in a heatwave, the unrest spread to London’s docks. “Piles of vegetables on the wharves rotted. Barrels of butter turned rancid. Fish and meat began to stink,” relates Andrew Marr in his Making Of Modern Britain.

The government brought in armed policemen and the military to try to break the strike. More than 1,600 special constables were drafted in.

Ben Tillett, leader of the new Transport Workers’ Federation, declared in a fiery letter to Winston Churchill then home secretary: “We shall bring about a state of war. Hunger and poverty have driven the dockers and shipworkers to this present resort and neither your soldiers nor police shall avert the catastrophe that’s coming to this country.”

Liverpool was the scene of widespread unrest as workers took to the streets. “Civil war – London and Liverpool under mob rule,” newsreels proclaimed.

The Mayor of Birkenhead declared a revolution was in progress and pleaded with the government: “If you cannot offer me more military or naval support I cannot answer for the safety of life or property.”

The government sent all the troops from the garrison of Aldershot North and two armoured cruisers HMS Antrim and HMS Warrior were dispatched.

On August 13 a demonstration of around 80,000 people on St George’s Plateau was violently suppressed by the authorities on what became known as Bloody Sunday.

“As policemen were aiming cruel blows upon the heads of men, women and children… dozens lay bleeding and unconscious, citizens were to be seen lying helpless on the ground,” an eyewitness reported.

POLICE demanded that film of the protests be edited so as to remove the scenes of their attacks on the crowd. The following day a general transport strike in the city was declared.

On August 15 soldiers shot dead dockers Michael Prendergast and John Sutcliffe. Later that week the four railway unions called a national strike – the first in Britain’s history.

Soon 200,000 men had joined the action. On August 20, near Llanelli station in Wales, two unarmed protesters, both 20, were killed by troops during a riot.

Faced with their authority challenged on every front the government compromised and granted concessions to the dockers and railwaymen but the unrest was far from over.

In September even schoolchildren went on strike – in the Edgehill district of Liverpool pupils “smashed windows and lamps”, demanding the abolition of the cane.

The following February one million miners walked out in the biggest strike the country had ever seen. In 1912 there was another dockers’ strike when Lord Devonport, head of the Port of London Authority, refused to agree to the workers’ demands.

“Sedition or no sedition, I want to say that if our men are murdered I am going to take a gun and shoot Lord Devonport,” declared Ben Tillett (who was also the dockers’ union leader) to a crowd at Tower Hill, who chanted: “He shall die! He shall die!”

“Almost every available soldier was on standby for the coming rising,” says Andrew Marr. “In the West End gentlemen left their clubs to buy revolvers to protect themselves from the revolution that was about to happen.”

Britain hovered on the brink for two years. The Suffragettes’ campaign intensified: in 1913 the new home of chancellor David Lloyd George was bombed.

In Ireland during the Curragh Mutiny 57 army officers, incensed at the government’s plan to crush a Unionist rebellion over Irish home rule, resigned their commissions.

In 1914 a Triple Alliance between the new National Union Of Railwaymen, the Transport Workers’ Federation and the Miners’ Federation was formed with the intention of arranging concerted action.

Only the events unfolding in the Balkans during that summer earned the government a reprieve from its domestic troubles.

As Britain entered the First World War the bitter disputes of previous years were put to one side as the country rallied round to face a common foe.

Even such Left-wing trade union leaders as Tillett were overcome by patriotic fervour and he helped to recruit workers across the nation into the armed forces.

While industrial disputes were to flare up again after the war the revolutionary moment had arguably passed as never again was a British government put under pressure on so many fronts.

The vote was granted to women on the same terms as men in 1928 and during the course of the century the position of workers improved greatly.

The Britain of 2011 is a very different country to that of 1911 but with real wages once again falling and tens of billions of pounds wiped off the stock market amid fears of a global economic crash, is our situation really that much less volatile?